I have an angel on my shoulder. It’s hard to see his wings, since he usually wears a trenchcoat. His slouch Fedora is pulled low over his eyes, except when he’s excited, which is often. The soles of his loafers leave little imprints on the shoulder of my shirt. The angel tells me things as I go throughout my day. Unfortunately, my angel is addicted to crystal meth, and his supply is erratic.

When he is on the upswing of his addiction, he whispers how wonderful I am, even if others don’t see my unique talents. Wait until they see the wonders that I am even now crafting. Writing? Parenting? Making videos? Working at my job? Singing? Playing racquetball? I am and have always been a wunderkind, able to do anything I want with the greatest of ease. From under his hat my angel’s face beams, lit from within by the fires of creation.

But when he crashes, oh, the things he tells me. How I am a fraud who has somehow escaped being exposed for the fraudy fraud I am. He is quick to point out the co-worker who disagreed with me and was right, the reviewer who hated my writing, the friend who didn’t call. Everything I do smells of failure, the acrid smell of fried electronics mixed with the aroma of flop-sweat.

Anne Lamott talks about this in Bird by Bird, though for her it’s a radio station.

If you’re not careful, station KFKD will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo. Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on.

I first started hearing this angel in graduate school. No, I lie: I’ve heard him for a long time, but before graduate school most things came easy to me. If they didn’t come easy to me, I dropped them. But in graduate school I had picked a profession I enjoyed and was good at, and suddenly I was surrounded by people who were far smarter than me and far better at physics than I was. I started having a hard time ignoring my crystal meth angel.

Lately my angel has been on the downward arc of his addiction. Every shot I hit in racquetball is evidence that I cannot play and never will. Every less-than-ecstatic review of my recent work of interactive fiction is proof that I have no idea what I am doing, and no one will like what I produce. Silence or strained grins from friends forced to watch the videos I’m working on demonstrate my incompetence.

The worst part of it is that there is always evidence to back up my angel’s claims when he’s depressed. When he’s higher than a kite his words are comforting, but they’re just that: words. But evidence of my mis-steps is easy to come by.

Dealing with my crystal meth angel is a long and laborious process. When he is manic, I remind myself that I may be unique, but that doesn’t guarantee that I’m interesting. My social security number is unique, but just you try to dance to it. I remember that it is one thing to be confident, but another thing entirely to have overweening and unsupported pride. When he is depressive, I wander around and distract myself with good memories. I lose myself in the details of what I’m doing, ignoring the big picture for a while. I breathe deep and remember that this is a phase my angel is going through, and that he’ll be better soon. I try not to rip off his fedora and cram it down his throat. My success rate in both cases is less than stellar.

I’m guessing a lot of you have a similar angel, or a radio tuned to KFKD, or a manifestation of Julia Cameron’s censor. How do you lot deal with this?

Yeah, I know DWP is not the height of literature but I’m a stay at home mom and I tend to read some pretty fluffy stuff. Theoretically this is a step up from my usual romance novels.

This movie just came out and the preview looked cute so I thought I’d read the book to see what it was about. I was unprepared for the sheer number of pages of train wreck-ocity. I wanted to stop reading but just I couldn’t put it down. The main character floats into a job at a fashion magazine, is tortured extensively by the editor-in-chief and somehow loses her ability to make decisions until the end of the book when she suddenly realizes that she can quit and find another job. I didn’t like the unnatural focus on women’s appearance or the fact that the editor-in-chief had zero redeeming qualities other than her status as editor. There was a big section in the middle where I hated all the characters. That sounds like I didn’t like the book and for the most part, I’d say that’s pretty accurate.

But despite all of that, there was something there that kept me turning pages. For one, Lauren Weisberger has a pretty good ear for conversation. She has some good scene construction. And it was funny, funny, funny maybe in some spots not how she intended it to be but I laughed anyway. And in the end the main character finds her spine and does something more positive with her life (like go and write a thinly-veiled novel account of her life).

I loaned DWP to Jessica so I’m anxious to hear her review of it.

What I’m reading now and will review next: David Sederis’ Me Talk Pretty One Day.

This is what we do after Stephen cleans the bathroom!

Stephen didn’t post it last night but we put new photos at the top. Clear your cache to see the new photo glory!

Before I had a kid, I thought parents who got sick from their small children were stupid.

I mean how hard is it to freaking wash your hands after you deal with your kid? (I’m pretty sure that this sentence should come with a laugh track.)

What I didn’t know was the intimacy and frequency with which you deal with your child. Between the never ending nose wipes, changing diapers and clothes, and eating; the primary care-giver, unless he or she is unusually resistant to cold germs, is going to get sick. Also, the level at which you are smug about not catching said cold germ also greatly affects the probability that you will catch it 24 hours after your kid is well.

That was me this weekend. Eli was sick. We realized it as soon as he got up Saturday morning. We had the discussion over breakfast that we shouldn’t be going to church on Sunday because he’d just infect everyone else. Luckily, it wasn’t a long-lasting cold. By Monday morning, he seemed to have made a decent recovery, so we ran some errands. I congratulated myself on not contracting this particular cold germ because I seem to have caught every other one Eli had this past winter or if not every other one, then at least two out of three.

Last night before I went to bed I felt the scratchy throat. I popped an airborne. This morning I had odd fever dreams about paying taxes on my car in Arkansas but without any checks in my check book and about Stephen catching a rattlesnake with his bare hands. At breakfast, I took another airborne. I may have to run out to the store sometime today for more airborne cause I’m pretty sure I’m going to take all I have today to ward off this crud.

I guess the moral of this story is never make fun of the common cold because it knows where you live. Ok, maybe that’s not actually the moral but somehow that’s funnier to me right now than laughing at myself for being stupid.

Eli has reached the stage where he is teaching himself through imitation. Tonight the two of us were in his room, under the black blanket that he always sleeps with. This blanket has stars, planets, and the occasional alien on it. He demands that we go under the blanket and look at the night sky, light filtering dimly through the colorful parts of the blanket.

After a minute of that, he wriggled out from under the cover. He went into my nighttime routine with him: he started patting my blanket-covered form and whisper-singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Then he leaned down to kiss me through the blanket. “See you inna A.M.,” just like I tell him.

He’s lately begun whispering to me after that, though: “Come back, daddy, come back!” So I stuck my head out from under the covers and whispered that to him. “No, I see you inna A.M.,” he told me firmly and left his room.

He’s also teaching himself by asking questions. No, that’s not exactly true: he is teaching himself by demanding that we do things. Near the end of bath tonight he was fingering his chest. “Finding your nipples?” I asked him.

“Yep.” Eli turned to Misty, earnest and concerned. “Mommy? You show me your nipples?”

“No,” Misty said, “men can show their nipples when they want to but women can’t.”

“Say ‘gender inequality,’ Eli!” I told him. He didn’t reply. He must be preparing for his coming role in the hegemonic patriarchy.

For some reason I woke up this morning and said to myself, “Bookmarks! Yeah! That’s what I’ll make today!” So here’s what I made:

Eli caught a cold sometime the end of last week and was sniffly and pitiful all weekend. So this is what this weekend looked like:

with a side of this:

Today has been non-stop whine all day long. School starts one week from tomorrow. How many hours is it from now till then?

My friend Dan Schmidt mentioned the Random Baby Namer at Pregnancy Today. Oh my goodness. The names it comes up with are terrible, especially the male ones. Crigger? Lightsey? Butts? You might as well hang a sign around their necks saying, “Taunt me please.”

We have reached the next stage of toddler evolution. Forget opening doors — now he can open the drawers and doors that have the kid-locks on them. He pulls them a little ways out, depresses the lock, and bing he’s into the knives or medicine or flamethrowers. And those toddler-proof doorknob covers? Those worked for all of three days.

This afternoon he crawled up onto Misty’s chair in front of her computer. “I play Cookie game!” He then proceeded to play the games by himself. He was a little slow on the mouse, but at the rate he’s learning I expect him to spank me at deathmatches in a week.